Hidden Figures - Margot Lee Shetterly

day, sixty students converged upon the
Woolworth’s, and by the fourth, three
hundred had joined the demonstration.
Participating were students from Bennett
College, an all-black women’s college in
Greensboro, as well as white students
from Guilford College and the Women’s
College of the University of North
Carolina. Within a week, the protests,
inspired by the nonviolent actions of
India’s Mahatma Gandhi, spread to other
cities in North Carolina, and then
crossed the borders into Kentucky,
Tennessee, and Virginia. The students
started calling their protests “sit-downs”
or “sit-ins.” The prison sentences that
often attended their activism did nothing
to quell their ardor. “Dear Mom and
Dad: I am writing this letter tonight from
a cell in the Greensboro jail. I was